Technology Forum

This is my first time here, so I'm hoping I did this right...(sorry for the length, but need to let everyone know what I've done) anyways,,I've been having problems with my PC (Dell Dimension 8400) recognizing my CD & DVD drives. One day, I put a CD in it, and it wouldn't read it, put a music one in, same thing...So I double checked to make sure all cables and power cords were tight, good to do. Same thing. Uninstalled the devices, restarted, WinXP "found new hardware" and started to install automatically. Everything went fine and then I got an error notification "A problem occurred during hardware installation, your device may not work properly". After trying to update the drivers, (which stated that I had the most current drives), I again removed the devices and after restarting, WinXP found new hardware and the same process began again. I looked in Device Mgr, and noticed that both my CD and DVD players were being recognized in that window, but not in My Computer, they were not showing up. They did have the yellow exclamation point, but both manufacturer's of my devices were listed, so I knew my PC knew the devices were there. Well, that was a few months ago, and it didn't really matter at that time as I didn't really use those drives, so I just kind of ignored the issue...well today, I bought an external CD/DVD USB drive. I followed the instructions to the exact information. Once again, my OS immediately found new hardware, started to install everything (Drive did not come with driver CD for WinXP as it didn't need it), I saw everything during the installation in the lower right, "found new hardware", then the "USB Device Detected", and it listed the DVD, then CD ROM,,and then I got the "a problem occurred during hardware installation error again. I went into Device Mgr and sure enough, it listed the manufacturer of my drive, but with the yellow exclamation point again..I tried to update the drivers automatically, and again, my drivers were the most current. I tried all my USB ports on my PC with the same results. All my USB ports work with different things, so I know all my ports work fine. I took the drive and plugged into another PC and it worked perfectly, with no problems.....so after all of this,,what could be causing my PC not to partially recognize my CD/DVD drives..it recognizes the manufacturer's of them, but that's about all. Any help would greatly be appreciated. I have no spyware/adware, no viruses, my PC is defragged, etc, etc. I keep a very up to date, clean free PC, but never came across an issue like this. So with all of this, what causes the error "A problem occurred during harware installation, your device may not work properly" I've done some searching on google, but all I seem to get is sites asking me to download a driver detective software, did that, and now it won't fix any issues I have unless I register a purchased copy,,,NOT !! Anyways, any suggestions would be so greatly appreciated. I do IT for my job and honestly have never came across an error like this, that's why I'm here (plus to learn) Thanks "JD"